Dear Aksys Games,
Many members of the Otome Armada have been looking forward to the 2020 otome game localizations since they were first announced at AnimeExpo in 2019. Many of us were excited to see Collar x Malice, Collar x Malice Unlimited, Piofiore -Fated Memories-, and Café Enchanté being ported and localized to the West. However, ever since the release of Collar x Malice Unlimited, the quality of the releases have been absolutely subpar and frankly, very disheartening.
As you may remember, some of us in this letter and many members of the otome gaming community have compiled a list of errors that were later recorded in a spreadsheet, which you can find here. After three weeks of working on the spreadsheet in the summer, we gathered approximately six-hundred potential errors which included text breaks, missing translations, improper programming, text overflow, and more. Kairi and Hena, who were responsible for the Collar x Malice Unlimited spreadsheet, were unsure if this would change anything -however, we, the otome gaming community, were thankfully proven wrong and notified by email that a patch would be released.
We are sincerely grateful that Aksys have listened to our requests for a patch and we are looking forward to replaying the updated version.
While we are grateful that Aksys listened to us and went ahead with a patch for Collar x Malice Unlimited, we were also serious in requesting that Piofiore and Café Enchanté receive better treatment in their releases. As of this letter, releases have been subpar and riddled with obvious errors. Many fans have expressed their disappointment on social media and are feeling unsure about the quality of future releases. Fans who purchased the games and received them days before the official release have made social media posts, shocked that there were again more errors.
However, we are not requesting for patches to be made for Piofiore -Fated- Memories and Café Enchanté. Although if we were to be honest, we do desire patches but we don’t expect such a thing to happen since we are aware that patches cost money and time. We have come to theorize that there are some internal affairs that may have to be sorted in order to get permission from the original company. In addition, we are aware that Aksys is not responsible for doing QA and translations so we are not placing the blame entirely on them.
As we mentioned, we are aware that there are probably internal affairs that we do not know about. Moreover, it appears that there could have been tight deadlines, which resulted in unpolished games; Collar x Malice Unlimited was released in August, Piofiore -Fated Memories- in October, and Café Enchanté in November. All of these games were released close together in the last half of 2020, so it is not difficult to imagine that there was little time to do proper QA and editing.
However, we do sincerely ask that there will be some considerations made for otome games slated for the future as we would like to prevent errors from having a negative impact on a player’s experience.
Many of the errors that were seen in Collar x Malice -Unlimited- were the same errors that continued to persist in Piofiore and Café Enchanté, alongside multiple grammar errors and broken sentences. This indicated to us that, once again, there was a lack of QA. There was also a heavy lack of consistency in Café Enchanté concerning character names which were spelled differently several times, creating confusion.
In particular, one of the biggest errors found in Café Enchanté was the translation of “hako oshi” (箱推し) to “box pusher”. Many players expressed confusion at the translation and its in-game dictionary definition. On Twitter, many professional J-E translators also expressed their dissatisfaction with the translation. Upon further research, players discovered the actual meaning of hako oshi (a person who is a fan of all the characters), and expressed that the meaning was severely lost. Many who also searched online were met with negative definitions of “box pusher” instead of the actual meaning of “hako oshi” (箱推し).
These are only some of the errors discovered upon release. Like we have said, we will not be creating spreadsheets and doing QA for free again unless properly compensated. It is a fact that we, otome gamers, should not be doing someone else’s job in hopes that the game will be released again but in better quality. So instead, we are attaching two documents that contain the potential errors discovered so that you are aware of the current states of both games and in the small possibility that Aksys chooses to patch them and fixes the errors on their own, these are available for reference.
We are extremely concerned that Aksys has decided to ignore the requests for a patch for Norn9, a game that was localized a few years ago that had a number of glaring errors and mistranslations. Many fans expressed their dissatisfaction with the QA done for Norn9; typos were not caught and this resulted in a number of awkward sentences. Despite fans were requesting a patch for years, no statements were made to address the problem. Digital Hearts were used for most localizations until Collar x Malice Unlimited (oddly, the QA company was changed for the same series). Collar x Malice Unlimited was full of errors, ranging from simple typos to programming errors.
Recently, Piofiore -Fated Memories- and Café Enchanté were released. While they did not have as many errors as Collar x Malice Unlimited, there were still more than one-hundred errors present in each game. This was very disappointing. Everyone expected better from Aksys after hearing positive feedback about fixing Collar x Malice -Unlimited- and held hopes. However, it is clear that our hopes were too rushed. The current states of all the otome games that were released this year makes it appear as if Pole to Win International did not do their job - frankly, it looks like they were paid to do nothing as even the simplest, eye-catching errors were not fixed.
Finally, we ask for the Aksys Marketing Team to treat otome games with more care when promoting them online, especially on Twitter.
As you may be aware due to the outcry by fans on social media, a giveaway was held by @aksysgames on Twitter before Collar x Malice -Unlimited- was released. However, many people were upset as the visual used to promote the game showed the mastermind behind the events in Collar x Malice. In our view, this was problematic in various ways as the switch port of Collar x Malice had just released, so there were a great number of new players who were spoiled by the tweet. In addition, many were unsure why such a visual was used as Otomate, the company which released the games in Japan, did not utilize such a spoiler image to promote the fandisc. Long-time players of Collar x Malice were especially concerned with the use of the spoiler image as one can make the conclusion that such spoilers can prevent people from purchasing the game, possibly resulting in lower sales and lack of interest.
In addition, the official Aksys twitter has been seen making careless mistakes such as using the wrong name for a character. At first, it was amusing but it soon began to transform into pure disappointment as the account started to make more mixups which can be found here. Emails sent to those who were subscribed to the Aksys Games otome game newsletters also contained incorrect information, such as dates for the Café Enchanté giveaway. These mistakes were made so frequently and many of us in the otome gaming community began to feel disrespected as these were careless mistakes; they simply hinted that no one on the team cared about the games enough to double-check for mistakes.
The otome gaming community has also felt discontent with how otome games have been treated and perceived by certain members of Aksys Games. In an article presented by Siliconera, one individual implied that games that were “girly with butterflies and sparkles” were not chosen to be localized in an attempt to appeal to men. This was a bit offensive to many of us for various reasons. First, it must be said that otome games are and have always been aimed towards women. We are unsure why these otome games that have been localized must always be “edgy” and “sinister” when many of us do enjoy happy, sparkly games and have always wanted to play them. This is not to say that we are against people who are not women playing otome games - in fact, we are happy to see more people dive into the world of otome games. We are absolutely fine with Aksys aiming to appeal to a larger audience and we enjoy plot-driven games, but we are offended with the way that it was phrased as it heavily implies that otome games are only considered acceptable to be localized if they appeal to individuals outside of the target audience. In addition, it is disheartening to see that games which are “sparkly” will likely not be localized - we DO enjoy such fluffy games and it is disappointing to see the interests of the target audience ignored.
We are once again asking Aksys to put better care into localizing their otome titles, as many of these errors could have been avoided and a patch would not be needed had the game been properly QA’d. We also suspect that the localization time for these games were very short, and we ask that Aksys take their time when localizing these titles. The Otome Armada has stressed that they do not mind delays for a quality product. We also believe that taking better care the first time around will help prevent such bad quality releases in the future and reduce the need for a patch and dissatisfaction amongst the target audience. Again, we are not sure if this is something that Aksys can control, but if possible we would like to request that they keep this in mind.
To reiterate, we are extremely grateful to Aksys for localizing our beloved otome games. Games that would have been left untouched were picked up to be localized and these localizations have made so many fans, including us, very happy. We sincerely appreciate that more efforts have been made to promote otome games online and a patch for Collar x Malice Unlimited is currently in development. However, there are many things that have to be changed in order to maintain the core audience’s support going into the future.
Sincerely,
… and Otome Armada
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